Interstate 40, the main east-west highway in Oklahoma, was closed for several hours Thursday when about 800 baby pigs spilled on to the road after the truck transporting them overturned, police said Friday.

Several pigs were killed when their vented livestock truck overturned just east of Oklahoma City. And the pigs, all of which were under a year old, had little idea what to do with their first taste of freedom.

The freeway was closed in both directions as state troopers, firemen and ambulance workers doubled as farm hands in a bid to prevent the pigs from running amok in the Oklahoma City suburbs and return them to a pig farm, police said.

Some of the pigs plunged to their deaths when they jumped off a highway bridge near the wreckage as law enforcement officials were closing in for their capture.

James Watson, an Oklahoma state trooper, said the situation would have been much worse if the pigs had been adults. "If these had been full-grown hogs, they would have gone ballistic," Watson said. "We would of had to shoot them."

Several motorists who stopped at the scene asked if they could take home a pig or two in their pickup trucks, Watson said. He added he thinks all of the surviving pigs were captured and being held at a livestock pen in Oklahoma City.

Yes, there are some hicks in Oklahoma. Yes, some people would like to take pigs home. Yes, some people use bad grammar. But Oklahoma is not all like that. Oklahoma has cities (well, two big ones) and theater and culture and rich people and preppies and intellectuals. And until recently it had me. ;)

I promise that if you were suddenly uprooted and set down in the middle of Oklahoma City or Tulsa, you wouldn't be able to guess you weren't in any other big city across the US. Or across the south; I won't deny the accent issue.